Jelly and Jelly
by oncethrown
Summary: Oneshot, in honor of wickedwonder's birthday. Jack and Eric go out searching for thier soulmates. Set during "The Eskimo"


Jack got into Yale too.

He never mentioned it to Topanga. At first because he didn't know about her decision not to go, then later because the one time she brought it up there was a twinge of bitterness in her voice, and the other time she brought it up it was with much, much more than a twinge.

But when he first found out, he sort of hoped that that common shred of background would make them friends. They'd be sitting on opposite sides of the student union, quietly reading a textbook or going over a paper or sitting in the same class, doodling their way through the same lecture and Jack would wish that he could talk to her about it. Both of them had flown in the face of family tradition when they'd chosen Pennbrooke, and both of them had spent a lot of time trying to convince their disappointed parents that there were things in this world a hell of a lot more important than some Ivy-League name on their diplomas.

Like adventure. Like learning to loosen up. Like fun. Like friends. Like love.

Jack had been staying in a hotel room for two days before he went down to Chubbies to look for a roommate. He spent 3 hours in his car in the parking lot convincing himself that there was absolutely no reason that he couldn't just walk in and find someone to live with him. Cory had kind of freaked him out, but Eric seemed cool. Clean, no pets and Jack was kind of relieved by the fact that Eric was used to having Shawn around in a way that he, Jack, wasn't.

Also far from being competition for the ladies, Jack was banking on Eric having the sort of easy charm that girls _and their friends_ went for. Someone with the smile and the eyes who would get a couple girls over at their table and then introduce Jack, who couldn't do that sort of thing on his own. And then Jack had gotten to know Eric.

Eric was crazy.

Eric dragged Jack along to deliver a babka to the Dean's house in the middle of the night. Eric shrunk all of his clothes and continued to walk around in them. Eric came home in dresses and forced Jack to start a fake fraternity. Eric saved him from a satanic cult with sunscreen. Eric hung out on the balcony with his imaginary mentor. And everything Eric did brought Jack out of his shell a little bit more. Every time he ran like hell from the rubble of one of Eric's collapsed schemes, Jack felt a little less mousy. A little more grown up. A little more capable. A little more alive.

And after a grand escape or a ridiculous incident, he and Eric would go back to their apartment, and Jack would swear that he was never falling for Eric's crazy shit again. And sometimes Jack would see Eric gave him this appraising look, like he knew that Jack had changed a little more that night. Opened up a little more. Come out of his shell a little more.

One completely insane night, stuck out among the general background insanity that Jack was beginning to get accustomed to. For no reason that Jack could remember, Eric had convinced everyone they knew to perform this ludicrous and humiliating dance sequence at some club. Jack had gotten up onstage without any argument, thrust and shimmied outrageously, jumped back onto the floor, picked up a girl and brought her home. When she left in the morning, with a quick kiss to his cheek, Jack turned the TV on to block the sound of Eric and the girl he'd picked up doing something that sounded adventurous. He was frying himself an egg sandwich when he realized that a couple months ago, no force in heaven or hell would have gotten him up on that stage. But now Eric could. And Jack had had fun. Stupid, silly, embarrassing fun.

After another twenty minutes and something that sounded suspiciously like a crash, Eric and his date emerged from Eric's bedroom. She waved a small greeting to Jack, who nodded back, then kissed Eric perfunctorily before sweeping out of the door.

"Any left over for me?" Eric asked dropping down onto the stool opposite Jack.

"There's still bread. And eggs," Jack responded.

"I _don't_ see where you're going with this..." Eric said. Jack knew wheedling when he heard it. He took a taunting bite of his sandwich and Eric gave in. He got back up off the stool.

"So. Dancing. That seems to work," Eric said, slotting bread into the toaster, "What say we try the swing club on the other side of town tonight? Maybe pick up a couple of rockabilly girls?"

"Eric we just brought girls home last night. Heather and Jessica. What makes you think that we're never going to see them again?"

"Okaaay- sorry. When do you and Heather have plans next?"

"Didn't give me her number," Jack shrugged.

"Oh- ouch," Eric sucked a breath between his teeth.

"What ouch?" Jack demanded.

"Nothing, nothing," Eric replied pulling his toast out of the toaster, "Hot! Just that… you know. Slept together… doesn't want to see you … ouch," he shot Jack a teasing smirk.

Jack would get offended if he hadn't already thought the same thing. Heather had earned herself the distinctly undistinguished position of Jack's first college conquest. Second conquest overall. If Valerie could be even be counted as his conquest and not the other way around.

Valerie had been his best friend from kindergarten to high school. As they'd grown up they'd wound up in very different crowds. Jack was mostly alone, studying hard and being responsible. Valerie had fallen in with a bad crowd, developed a taste for bad boys and wound up with a black eye before calling Jack one night. They'd sat in her basement and watched a movie, Valerie inching closer to him across the couch before finally settling down into his lap. He stroked her hair, she'd stroked his knee. And when he'd tried to get out from under her before she realized what it was doing to him, she'd sat up enough to kiss him, taken him by the wrist and a gently guided him back out to his car. His hands had been shaking too badly to undress either of them, so she'd done it, stroking his face and telling him it was fine when he'd popped, maybe ten thrusts in. Jack's outstanding memory of that experience was the way that the orange of the street light had made the bruise over her eye a deep, bottomless black, like there was a hole in her face, and the irony of sitting underneath her, a lonely kids whose biggest problem was parental, being soothed by a girl with a great black hole over her face, with a slight shine glimmering out of it like a star when the shine of the streetlight caught her eye. They'd dated for a few months, he'd tentatively explored, she'd quietly recovered, neither had really loved the other, and they hadn't so much broken up as ceased to date. She'd gotten in Duke.

"What about you?" Jack demanded, "You aren't making plans with Jessica. Did she ask you for your number?"

"We exchanged numbers," Eric said, pulling a jar of jelly down and beginning to spread it liberally on his toast.

Jack imitated Eric's breath between his teeth, "Ouch. You slept with her and she doesn't want to see you huh? Tough break."

"No… she was all up for seeing me again. Then I dropped her."

"You dropped her?"

Eric raised an eyebrow villainously at him, "Not on purpose."

They didn't go out that night, it turned out that humiliating dancing and overly-adventurous sex took its toll.

But a couple nights later they did, and there was another girl without a number that time. And the time a couple weeks later. And the week after that Eric was stuck on the first page of a huge paper and looking a late Saturday night start for an early Monday morning deadline. So Jack left him gulping coffee and went out on his own for the first time since he'd gotten to Philadelphia. He met a girl, he got her number, he set up a date, and he kissed her goodnight at her door before going home. Eric was passed out on the couch, his hand stuffed into a bag of slowly melting skittles, coffee burning on the pot, still on the first page of his paper. Jack made a fresh pot of coffee before he woke Eric up, and then he turned in.

Both Jack and Eric's adventures in dating petered out after that. Their official apartment game became to try and describe your night in a way that made it sound like you'd had a real date.

One day Jack came home and Eric was out on the balcony, full coffee pot balanced precariously on the ledge, poised to scald unwitting passers-by.

"Hey, didn't hear you come in last night. Must've had a pretty good time with your date huh?" Jack challenged.

Eric took a moment of thought before responding, "The evening began at seven, started with some intimate pre-dinner conversation at a quaint little Mexican place I happen to know, came back here, and- let's just say my clothes were off in five minutes," He made eyebrows at Jack and took a self-satisfied swig of coffee.

"You opened your big mouth," Jack interpreted, "She walked out. You ate alone at Taco Bell. Came home. Took off all your clothes and were asleep by eight o'clock."

"How'd you do?" Eric asked.

"Not as good," Jack sighed. He'd gotten stood up, then seen the girl with another guy when he stopped to buy a candy bar on the way home. And he hadn't even managed to come up with a good misleading description for it.

"Jack, what are we going to do?" Eric whined.

"I don't know. It's not us."

"No it is not us. You know who it is?"

"Them," Jack replied instantly.

"All of 'em," Eric huffed, "We need to make a change."

"Yeah," Jack agreed, ready to throw out a theory he'd been working on since the second time he and Valerie had slept together, "We've got to be more choosy my friend, find women who are more compatible."

"You know something you're right. No more randomly just picking out women and hoping that they like us, I say we embark upon a mission," Jack was always amazed at how a man who was often unable to split their even digit phone bill in half would throw out words like "embark" and "upon", "To find our perfect companions. Our soulmates."

Jack hadn't lived with Eric this long without learning to spot a scheme when he heard it. Before Eric could suggest some sort of completely insane idea involving a grappling hook, a scuba suit, an a bow tie that was also a hand grenade Jack pointed down to a couple of girls enjoying the autumn breeze at street level, "How about them?"

"Hey you two!" Eric had yelled, a couple of skinny blonde guys looked up at him, one of them grinned widely "No not-" the girls Jack had actually been pointing at looked up, "okay yeah- you!"

And because it was Eric they waved. And because it was Eric they waited for the roommates to come down to talk to them. Jack had given Eric directions to an actual quaint little Mexican place, and taken his own date out for sushi, hoping that throwing a little of his father's money around might impress her. She'd been fun. Sweet, funny. With that same adventurous spirit that Jack had been desperately trying to sponge off of Eric and inject into his own personality. She'd kissed him hard at the end of the night, all passion and tongue and hands tight on his waist. He'd still been catching his breath as she closed the door behind her.

And then they'd both called back. Eric and Jack, panicked at the prospect of a their very first second dates (Jack didn't think that a couple of movies and two or three car sex appointments with Valerie really fell under the heading of "dates") had banded together, suggesting the safety net of a double date. The girls had agreed.

Eric spent an entire hour in the bathroom arranging his hair so that it looked like he hadn't bothered to arrange it at all and it just looked that fantastic all the time before coming out into the living room and tugging Jacks computer away from him,

"Jack," Eric had groaned, "This is why you will never wind up with any woman worth having. We have finally met two girls that are different from any other girls we've ever dated before."

"Why?"

"Because they're coming back! You know why they're coming back? Because they see in us what we see in them. Compatibility. We're perfect for each other! You're putting your studies before your soul mate!"

Jack sighed and let his argument that studies are important be brushed aside by the usual Eric-babble that they were always met with. The door buzzer went off and Eric jumped to answer it with a cry of "Soul mates!"

"What is the chance that we managed to find two girls who are anything like us?" Jack demanded. Eric's enthusiasm reeked of scheming.

Jill and Carol were both dressed a little casual for the big, fancy, expensive French dinner that Jack had planned, but if they just got a booth out of view of the door they'd probably be fine. Though, considering Eric's flannel and Carol's jeans, the "taco!" idea did have its merits.

By the time they'd got to the elevator, Jack and Eric were already several significant looks into their plan for the night. Jack and Jill. Of course. How hadn't he seen that before? Carol was fun, and they'd had such a good time, but Jill made so much sense, someone simple and practical, with a family life just like his. With a best friend just like his. They could lament about being caught up in crazy together!

Back at the apartment Eric and Jack did their best to just… switch them around. It didn't go so well. Eric's affectionate onslaught annoyed Carol, Jack's logical discussion did nothing to impress Jill, who didn't seem to care that they really were, "Like peanut butter and jelly. Like Jelly and Jelly."

A slap a piece later, a declaration that no one makes a sandwich out of jelly and jelly and a hearty storming out later Eric declared, "We learned an important lesson here today, Jack," He patted Jack on the back and gripped his shoulders, "Maybe finding soul mates isn't going to be as easy as we thought."

Jack spun around, "We can't just find them. Maybe the girls taught us that…"

Jack had been about to continue that maybe the lesson that they'd learned here was that they were too aggressive. Going out in search of a soul mate was a fruitless endeavor that only ended in disappointment and stinging cheeks.

And then, there in front of him, was that look he sometimes imagined Eric giving him. That look that Jack thought Eric ran over him when Eric thought he'd taught Jack something about living.

"That no one makes a sandwich out of jelly and jelly," He finished.

"I do," Eric said, "Jelly on one side of the bread, jelly on the other. Dee-lish."

"And that you can't go out looking for a soul mate. A soul mate comes to you."

Eric didn't respond, he just stood there in front of Jack, that look in his eye. Jack set a hand against the back of Eric's head and pressed their lips together. After a second Eric pressed back, then opened his mouth, and licked the seam of Jack's lips. Jack pulled back with a hiss. Eric continued to stand there calmly.

"You bastard," Jack laughed, "How the hell did you set this up?"

"I didn't set this up, you picked two girls from the balcony," Eric shrugged, "This fell into place."

"No way. There's no way that this was a coincidence."

"Fortune favors the bold, Jack," Eric sighed, and kissed him again, "I don't plan. I just do."

Jack kissed Eric again and Eric widened it into the same kiss Carol had given him- passion and tongue and hands tight at his waist- and this little hint of dare underneath it. _Follow me Jack._

And Jack had to. He always had to. Had to follow a man who quoted Virgil and tried to order tacos at a French restaurant. Who walked around in shrunken clothes but knew that if you didn't have pictures you didn't have nothing. Who ate jelly and jelly sandwiches, but knew that jelly and jelly didn't actually go together.

Eric stepped back, taking Jack with him and they walked backward to Jack's bedroom. Because it was the first door in the hallway, and because Jack had been learning from Eric to take opportunities when they came. To do crazy things just to see what would happen.

And then believe they'd turn out for the best.


End file.
